Translation

====Back-translation====
A "back-translation" is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. Comparison of a back-translation with the original text is sometimes used as a check on the accuracy of the original translation, much as the accuracy of a mathematical operation is sometimes checked by reversing the operation.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=1xAdjkR14ocC&dq=source+language+translation&pg=PA454 Measurement in Nursing and Health Research], pg. 454. Eds. Carolyn Waltz, Ora Lea Strickland and Elizabeth Lenz. 4th ed. [[New York City|New York]]: [[Springer Publishing]], 2010. {{ISBN|9780826105080}}</ref> But the results of such reverse-translation operations, while useful as approximate checks, are not always precisely reliable.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.atc.org.uk/winter2004.pdf |title=Back Translation: Same questions – different continent |journal=Communicate |issue=Winter 2004 |page=5 |last=Crystal |first=Scott |access-date=20 November 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060520035802/http://www.atc.org.uk/winter2004.pdf |archive-date=20 May 2006}}</ref> Back-translation must in general be less accurate than back-calculation because [[linguistic]] symbols ([[word]]s) are often [[ambiguous]], whereas mathematical symbols are intentionally unequivocal. In the context of machine translation, a back-translation is also called a "round-trip translation." When translations are produced of material used in medical [[clinical trial]]s, such as [[informed consent|informed-consent forms]], a back-translation is often required by the [[Ethics Committee (European Union)|ethics committee]] or [[institutional review board]].<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.gts-translation.com/medicaltranslationpaper.pdf |title=Back Translation for Quality Control of Informed Consent Forms |journal=Journal of Clinical Research Best Practices |access-date=1 February 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060505141653/http://www.gts-translation.com/medicaltranslationpaper.pdf |archive-date=5 May 2006}}</ref>

[[File:Mark Twain, Brady-Handy photo portrait, Feb 7, 1871, cropped.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.8|In 1903, [[Mark Twain]] back-translated his own [[short story]], "[[The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County]]".]]

[[Mark Twain]] provided humorously telling evidence for the frequent unreliability of back-translation when he issued his own back-translation of a French translation of his [[short story]], "[[The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County]]". He published his back-translation in a 1903 volume together with his English-language original, the French translation, and a "Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story". The latter included a synopsized adaptation of his story that Twain stated had appeared, unattributed to Twain, in a Professor Sidgwick's ''Greek Prose Composition'' (p.&nbsp;116) under the title, "The Athenian and the Frog"; the adaptation had for a time been taken for an independent [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] precursor to Twain's "Jumping Frog" story.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/jumpingfroginen01twaigoog <!-- quote=french The Jumping Frog. --> Mark Twain, ''The Jumping Frog: In English, Then in French, and Then Clawed Back into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil'', illustrated by F. Strothman, New York and London, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, MCMIII [1903].</ref>

When a document survives only in translation, the original having been lost, researchers sometimes undertake back-translation in an effort to reconstruct the original text. An example involves the novel ''[[The Manuscript Found in Saragossa|The Saragossa Manuscript]]'' by the Polish aristocrat [[Jan Potocki]] (1761–1815), who wrote the novel in French and anonymously published fragments in 1804 and 1813–14. Portions of the original French-language manuscript were subsequently lost; however, the missing fragments survived in a Polish translation, made by [[Edmund Chojecki]] in 1847 from a complete French copy that has since been lost. French-language versions of the complete ''Saragossa Manuscript'' have since been produced, based on extant French-language fragments and on French-language versions that have been back-translated from Chojecki's Polish version.<ref>[[Czesław Miłosz]], ''The History of Polish Literature'', pp. 193–94.</ref>

Many works by the influential [[Classical antiquity|Classical]] physician [[Galen]] survive only in medieval [[Arabic]] translation. Some survive only in [[Renaissance Latin]] translations from the Arabic, thus at a second remove from the original. To better understand Galen, scholars have attempted back-translation of such works in order to reconstruct the original [[ancient Greek|Greek]].{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}

When historians suspect that a document is actually a translation from another language, back-translation into that hypothetical original language can provide supporting evidence by showing that such characteristics as [[idiom]]s, [[pun]]s, peculiar [[Grammar|grammatical]] structures, etc., are in fact derived from the original language. For example, the known text of the ''[[Till Eulenspiegel]]'' folk tales is in [[High German]] but contains puns that work only when back-translated to [[Low German]]. This seems clear evidence that these tales (or at least large portions of them) were originally written in Low German and translated into High German by an over-[[Metaphrase|metaphrastic]] translator.

Supporters of [[Aramaic primacy]]—the view that the [[Christianity|Christian]] [[New Testament]] or its sources were originally written in the [[Aramaic language]]—seek to prove their case by showing that difficult passages in the existing [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] text of the New Testament make much more sense when back-translated to Aramaic: that, for example, some incomprehensible references are in fact Aramaic puns that do not work in Greek. Due to similar indications, it is believed that the 2nd century Gnostic [[Gospel of Judas]], which survives only in [[Coptic language|Coptic]], was originally written in Greek.

[[John Dryden]] (1631–1700), the dominant English-language literary figure of his age, illustrates, in his use of back-translation, translators' influence on the evolution of languages and literary styles. Dryden is believed to be the first person to posit that English sentences should not end in [[preposition]]s because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions.<ref>[http://ling.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/data/B_HIST_EU.html Gilman, E. Ward (ed.). 1989. "A Brief History of English Usage", Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield (Mass.): Merriam-Webster, pp. 7a-11a], {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201152753/http://ling.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/data/B_HIST_EU.html |date=1 December 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Greene|first=Robert Lane|title=Three Books for the Grammar Lover in Your Life: NPR|newspaper=NPR.org|url=https://www.npr.org/2011/05/17/133652882/three-books-for-the-grammar-lover-in-your-life?sc=fb&cc=fp|publisher=[[National Public Radio|NPR]]|access-date=18 May 2011}}</ref> Dryden created the proscription against "[[preposition stranding]]" in 1672 when he objected to [[Ben Jonson]]'s 1611 phrase, "the bodies that those souls were frighted from", though he did not provide the rationale for his preference.<ref>Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, 2002, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, p. 627f.</ref> Dryden often translated his writing into Latin, to check whether his writing was concise and elegant, Latin being considered an elegant and long-lived language with which to compare; then he back-translated his writing back to English according to Latin-grammar usage. As Latin does not have sentences ending in prepositions, Dryden may have applied Latin grammar to English, thus forming the controversial rule of [[Preposition stranding#The Debate about P-stranding|no sentence-ending prepositions]], subsequently adopted by other writers.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3komDgAAQBAJ&q=word+by+word+kory+stamper|title=Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries|last=Stamper|first=Kory|date=1 January 2017|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|isbn=9781101870945|pages=47}}</ref>{{efn|Cf. a supposed comment by [[Winston Churchill]]: "This is the type of pedantry up with which I will not put."}}
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